A Voice Apart

When I’m talking to any singer, I always bring up to their attention, that they do represent the instrument, so to speak, and the player. In this instance, I mean that their physical body, their mental state, anatomy and physiology integrated and synergized, represent the actual instrument. The support, the structure, the placement and projection of the voice to its aimed destination, represent the player. The late celebrity pianist “Liberace” had always travelled with his favourite pink grand piano. Being the greatest pianist of all time, he definitely knew how to extract the maximum capacity from that instrument. That’s what I call “The Total Performer”. I.e. He owned a great instrument and he was a brilliant player. When the singer gets into vocal distress , the industry and naturally the doctors are concerned only about how to fix the vocal anatomy of the Artist. And if it’s fixed successfully, they applaud to the highly qualified surgeon and applaud the Artist,

I remember watching one of my favourite movies-"Basic Instinct", with Michael Douglas and Sharron Stone in main roles. There was one of the scenes where Michael Douglas's character was making love to his girlfriend, which in real sense, resulted in the actual force, as he was already attracted to Sharron Stone's character and felt angry, because he intuitively felt that the outcome of it could be deadly for him in the end. I have a similar feeling when I am listening to a singer reciting a great song with great emotion, while actually "forcing/murdering" their vocal anatomy. The audience, who does not know any better, are saying "Oh my god, He/she is such a great singer !" while having not the slightest idea of what that singer is experiencing and what it does to his/hers vocal chords and vocal box in general. That's, in my opinion, qualifying as a "vocal rape", nevertheless. As a consequence, the singer will get a nasty gro

Everybody knows there is a rock style and there is an alternative rock style. But not everybody knows that there is an alternative… to music? How so you may ask? The fact is that the music, like everything else in life, has its own standards. Many years ago, I wrote an article which was called “First, Third and a half and Fifth and a quarter, to our shame, became our music standards".  I was talking about the triad which usually consists of the first, third and fifth steps from whichever musical key you want to start counting. I believe it is self-explanatory now and describes it perfectly. However, world renowned judges, primarily performers themselves, at times make strange decisions with respects to who is going to make it through the blind auditions and move on under their supervision, and who is not. To my surprise, there were a couple of vocalists who were dead-on musically and pitch wise, but for some reason, did not get chosen. And there were definite

Working with the producers for over three decades, and especially for the last several years, never ceases to amaze me. First of all, being a vocal consultant, especially for my clients, and in-studio vocal producer, I'm unable to explain to them that they don't need to autotune or melodine every vocal line, because I am present in the studio for the very reason to pull out from the artist an authentic and the best performance. Moreover, some of them are playing the role of a song writer or co-writer with the artist and myself. By the end of the session, I'm beginning to hear a similar tune and/or style, which is already familiar to my ear. Verbalizing my concern with various producers, I came to the conclusion that music and "vocal plagiarism" is very much so in fashion.  Their belief is that if the certain sound and style is "hot" right now and selling like "hot cakes", why not write and produce something similar, and that also will p

I have been working with beginners and professionals for over 37 years now. Strangely enough, I find that to work with the beginners is much easier than to work with people who had some vocal experience or a lot of it. The beginners do not know any better or any worse for that matter, and it is easier to put them on the "right track", as they don't have any pre-conceived ideas.  They also don't have the bad habits instilled in them either by themselves or by incompetent instructors, whereas those people with so called "experience" consciously or primarily sub-consciously are rejecting 'so to speak' the new modality of a "new behaviour", I could compare it with patients who receive new organs via medical transplant. Sometimes, the human body rejects something foreign, in spite that it could be a live saviour for the patient.  I also have older clients, and with them, there is another problem. They are very conservative, and they

Last night, I finally (however delayed for the good reasons) returned from my recent UK trip. What was different this time was that not only did I bring my own artist for recordings and what not, but also attempted to work with the local artists or artists to be, via two Vocal Interactive Workshops and some voice repair private sessions. I've been doing all of this starting from Russia in 1975-76 and for the last 32 years, in Canada to date. Was I ever shocked when I embarked on what I thought was very familiar to me, with the British audience? Within the first five minutes I understood that I appeared to them as a complete "hurricane" on a bright sunny day (to put it mildly). They were sitting still and almost shockingly staring at me, however, with surprise and fascination in their eyes. I meanwhile, did not feel at ease at all. I felt like Maria from Sound of Music, but not coming out of the convent to meet a future husband, but rather coming in...? In my opi

One of my friends likes to use this expression; “There is no change without change”. Usually, it’s very much so true. Lately, it’s been no secret that quite a few well-known singers have acquired a lot of vocal problems; bleeding vocal cords , polyps, nodules , dysphonia and other nasty vocal disorders. Why is that... and what is the cause, you, my reader, may ask? We often hear people saying: “We love the voice, we love his or her songs, we love the emotions, we love the performance…” So, what is the problem then? The problem is that nobody knows (let alone singers themselves) or pays attention to the voice application and how exactly that voice is being used by the performers. And yes, the industry usually picks up a good-looking person, quite often with good songwriting skills and with the potential of that person becoming a worldwide recording artist and performer. And yes, when it comes to recording, the best producers and engineers will be producing their "